The NSA Leak Is Real, Snowden Documents Confirm

ON MONDAY, A HACKING group calling itself the “ShadowBrokers” announced an auction for what it claimed were “cyber weapons” made by the NSA. Based on never-before-published documents provided by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, The Intercept can confirm that the arsenal contains authentic NSA software, part of a powerful constellation of tools used to covertly infect computers worldwide.

The provenance of the code has been a matter of heated debate this week among cybersecurity experts, and while it remains unclear how the software leaked, one thing is now beyond speculation: The malware is covered with the NSA’s virtual fingerprints and clearly originates from the agency.

The evidence that ties the ShadowBrokers dump to the NSA comes in an agency manual for implanting malware, classified top secret, provided by Snowden, and not previously available to the public. The draft manual instructs NSA operators to track their use of one malware program using a specific 16-character string, “ace02468bdf13579.” That exact same string appears throughout the ShadowBrokers leak in code associated with the same program, SECONDDATE.

Read the rest of this report here:

https://theintercept.com/2016/08/19/the-nsa-was-hacked-snowden-documents-confirm/

UPDATED: Concerns About SRRO School-Closure Plan – from the Fix the mitten blog

The Michigan Department of Education told schools they were not going to hold the results of this new test against schools as they determined their future. Then Governor Rick Snyder took power of the School Reform Office from the Department of Education. As a result the plan changed. That test counts.

Read the full blog post here: 

http://www.fixthemitten.com/blog/updated-concerns-about-srro-school-closure-plan

From the CURMUDGUCATION blog: American Enterprise Institute Compares Public and Charter Schools

 

AEI: Comparing Public and Charter Schools
Blog post by Peter Greene: 18 Aug 2016 
The folks at the American Enterprise Institute have released a study comparing charter schools to public schools.

“Difference on Balance: National Comparisons of Charter and Traditional Public Schools” announces in its title that AEI continues to support the modern charter school industry (charter schools are not public schools in any meaningful way except their willingness to accept public tax dollars).
That said, a quick scan of the end notes shows a broad assortment of articles and even some studies not from the usual suspects. So this could be interesting.

We should never pretend that AEI is anything but a huge fan of charter schools as a tool in the invisible hand of free market economics, but AEI is also, on the whole, one of the more intellectually rigorous thinky tanks in the biz.

They may be working to sell reformster PR, but at least it’s not flimsy thin baloney PR, and after you’ve read a hundred or so of these things, you start to appreciate people who at least do a little homework and don’t just base their “research” on five “reports” from their own organization.

At any rate, let’s take a look at this thirty-two page paper.

Once again (I believe this is the closest thing I have to a bloggy slogan) I’ve read it so that you don’t have to.

Here we go… follow this link > CURMUDGUCATION: AEI: Comparing Public and Charter Schools

From the CURMUDGUCATION blog: The Ledger: Lab Rat America

The Ledger: Lab Rat America

Blog post by Peter Greene: 17 Aug 2016 12:14

Oh my God. Oh my effing God.

If you want to see where Competency Based Education, data mining, the cradle to career pipeline, the gig economy, and the transformation into a master and servant class society all intersect– boy, have I got a video for you.

Spoiler alert: this is also one way that public education dies.

Read the full blog post here: CURMUDGUCATION: The Ledger: Lab Rat America